Monday, January 12, 2015

Book Review: The Green Condition

The Green Condition is
a lyrical collage composed of raccoons, metal-casting, Roman history,
Seattle, and the trials and tribulations of moving. Though Colen dives
into these distinct and metaphoric images in a stream of
conscious-style, she ties them together through the narrator’s revealing
one-liners:Once I know what to listen for, I hear it all the time.The Green Condition
evokes the lush, overgrown arboreal environment that is the Pacific
Northwest. At the same time, it evokes the loneliness that comes when a
new job absorbs a significant other. The narrator has no choice but to
observe her (his?) new surroundings.When she leaves I put her toothbrush in my mouth. I hold it here two hours.
Comparisons of Seattle and Rome further evoke the narrator's loyalty to
nostalgia. Unlike Rome, Seattle stands, and continues growing. Does the
narrator hope for the fall of Seattle where the couple can return to
their old life?At one point we had a symbiosis. An understanding of how a life should look.
Enter the raccoons and metal-casting the narrator continues dissecting
during these lonely days. Colen weaves these vastly different images
together in a way that reveals a the narrator’s resolve in this new
environment: scavenging to survive and building a thick skin despite a
dissolvable core.In the green condition there must be adequate strength for handling.I
am most interested in the bronze sculpture of the wolf, and the core
that was made to hold it. The core that was designed to come apart in
the end once the casting metal had cooled, held shape.
Was it the move? The raccoons? The longing for a fading love? The
casting of a new shell to survive? We won’t know—but through these
images, though at first glance appear irrelevant, Colen deconstructs
them in a way that inspires readers to find symbolism and meaning in the
most uncharted manner.

Elizabeth J. Colen is the author of the poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), as well as flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011). She lives in Seattle.